Named as “A dramatic and wide-reaching change in conditions, attitudes, or operation”, Mark 7 Reloading has started showing their forthcoming Mark 7 Revolution reloading stand. Known for their Dillon 1050 and 650 electronic drives, the Revolution is Mark 7’s first foray into their own reloading machine, and it’s not a small jump. Mark 7 touts the machine can load up to 3,500 rounds in one hour.

They state they are being guarded about information, but have released some information on the system – primarily that it’s built to be electronically driven. The entire operation of the reloading machine is computer controlled and monitored. Dillon kits simply retrofit the reloading handle. Further, it integrates all the various sensors that have typified their high-end 1050 machines including: JamSense, TorqueSense, PowderSense, the Optical Decapping Sensor, SwageSense, and PrimerSense.

The machine is quite compact, coming in at 15″ x 15″ x 33″ “with a slight overhang for onboard accessories.” The Revolution is designed for all common pistol calibers .380 and larger and up to battle rifle rounds such as .30-06. Initial support will be for 9mm, .38, .40, .45, .223, and .308. It seems (but not confirmed), that the reloader includes auto case loading, a large powder holder, and other common aftermarket accessories.

Mark 7 anticipates the release of the Revolution in summer S of 2017. Retail pricing is $8,499, with a $1,500 deposit to reserve your space in line.

One of TFB’s resident Jarheads, Nathan now works within the firearms industry. A consecutive Marine rifle and pistol expert, he enjoys local 3-gun, NFA, gunsmithing, MSR’s, & high-speed gear. Nathan has traveled to over 30 countries working with US DoD & foreign MoDs.

The above post is my opinion and does not reflect the views of any company or organization.

Word on the street is that it will have a larger toolhead. It would be awesome to be able to load 223 without having to process the brass on a separate toolhead first.

And though the price seems expensive, it isn’t. To get the same level as this machine you need
Dillon 1050
Bulletfeeder
Mark VII Reloading Machine with all the sensors
Dillon primer loading machine

I did the math, and there is only about a $1,500 difference. And you still won’t get all the features that this machine will have. I think for some high volume users this would be a good step up. Especially for high volume rifle users if the rumors are correct.

Spencerhut

“Word on the street is that it will have a larger toolhead.” That is not a rumor, the toolhead is much larger than a 1050. I didn’t bother to count the stations, but it was more than a 1050.

jng1226

I’ve seen CAD renderings and it looks like 10 stations.

Nate

They had the prototype at SHOT. 10 stations. I think the best part of it was a primer filler integrated into the machine. Dump in lose primers, and they are aligned and dropped into the tube. Essentially they have integrated the dillon primer tube filler into the press, which is nice. Now you are dumping brass, bullets, powder, and primers into the press and it is dropping everything correctly aligned for you.

Ark

$8,500. Assuming $40 for a set of dies and assuming I could save about 5cpr off retail 9mm pricing, I would have to shoot 170,800 rounds of 9mm before that rig would pay for itself. That’s 467 rounds per day, every single day, for an entire year.

Drew Coleman

This is probably aimed at high volume shooters who need or want a specific load that you can’t buy commercially, easily.

Not really. First off the savings is much more than $0.05 per a round. More like $0.15-0.20 a round, because he is comparing blasting ammo, while the type of shooter that would own this is likely using match ammo.

But more than likely rifle shooters will probably be the biggest market with the larger toolhead. You can probably bulk load 223 on this. Dump in lubed 223 brass, and out pops quality 223 for 3 gun or other matches that don’t require extreme precision, but better precision than commercial ammo.

My last order of bullets of $492.60 for 8,000 bullets delivered. So $0.061 per a shot.

My last order of CCI primers was $780.72 for 25,000 primers. So $0.031 a shot.

My last order of powder was $305.95 for 16lbs. At 7,000 grains that gives me 112,000 grains. The math gets fuzzy here because it was two different powders and I have different loads, but my average powder charge is 5.1gr per a round. So I would get about 21,960.8 rounds per order. So $0.014 a shot.

9mm brass is free, and I have at least 100,000 pieces of 9mm brass. I am working on getting other calibers.

My total is $0.106 a shot, or rounded up to $0.11 a shot. So I am saving about $0.19 a shot.

I have about $3,000 invested in reloading equipment. And I shoot about 20,000 rounds a year. Purely on round count my ROI is at 15,789 rounds. Or about 9 months. If I bought one of these at the current price of $9,500, that would be at 50,000 rounds. Or 2.5 years.

The numbers work out if you shoot enough, and would benefit from high quality ammo. But even at a cost saving of $0.09 a shot (over reloaded plinking ammo) ROI can still be had.

Just say’n

Thanks, that was very educational.

billyoblivion

Now factor in the number of hours you spend loading ammo, including cleaning, inspecting and tumbling brass etc.

My brass processing is pretty basic. I probably spend 16 hours to get a years worth of brass. And most of that I am doing other things.

As far as loading, I don’t have an automated setup so I do about 1,000 rounds in about 5 hours start to finish. So about 100 hours loading each year. For a total yearly time investment at 116 hours.

If I got a Mark 7 (and one is in my future) I could probably do it in under 2 hours when you factor in start to finish time. Which lowers my yearly time investment total to around 60 hours.

Sure I could probably do something that resulted in making money during those hours, but I already spend most of my waking time thinking about work so spending a day every two weeks putzing around loading helps keep me sane.

raz-0

Look, first, yeah $9500 does buy a lot of ammo. However, I blew past that dollar value many years ago.

Second, ROI gets all over the place, but unless you can realistically get paid for the time you would be reloading, the time it takes isn’t a dollar value, it’s just opportunity cost. You have unlimited OT available, or you are a high zoot professional like a lawyer or high end accountant ot such that can bill out working for a couple hours at 10pm on a Sunday, then yeah, it’s real dollars. You work a schedule where they don’t want OT and/or are salaried… not real money.

Opportunity cost wise, I’d get back family time, or shooting time, or practice time, all of which are desirable things to me.

Third, yeah it’s near impossible to justify. There’s a very short list of things that I lust after, can actually buy, and most definitely shouldn’t from a responsible adult perspective. This is REAL high on that don’t you dare or you will be in so much trouble list.

KiwiGuy

I think it’s pretty obvious you’re not their target market.

Mystick

I believe something would go wrong with it way before you get near that number.

I think most find you that you don’t save that much money, instead you end up shooting more. Instead of spending 2-3 hours a week practicing I am doing 3-4 hours.

Wolfgar

A new reliable primer feed for the Dillon 1050 would be a nice invention. This does look like a promising reloader but directed more for the commercial market not the home.

jng1226

I’ve got a friend in the reloading business that bought one of the first Dillon Super 1050 Mark 7 conversions. He loads about 100,000 rounds every 2-3 weeks on it at about 1,200 rounds per hour setting and the Dillon press is the weak link. So many small parts fail on that thing when you run it at that speed. Dillon doesn’t warranty any parts if you have your press converted to auto-drive but they have told him on the phone that the parts that are breaking are not supposed to be breaking.

I think that’s why Mark 7 came out with their own press design, as it should be purpose-engineered to load at serious volumes. Also, the next step in ammunition manufacturing is a Camdex or Auto-Load machine and those run $50K+

TechnoTriticale

So is it thought that this sort of small-scale automation decreases or increases the risk of overcharged or squib loads?

Not a rhetorical question.

raz-0

The full zorch mark7 puts in a lot of QC checks for overcharge and squib loads, missing primers, etc.

Will it outperform your QC on your own reloads? That depends on what you do and how vigilant you are. There’s no reason to believe it would be any worse than other commercial systems though. People are using them for commercial reloads and not getting sued all over the place.

The mark7 stuff is pretty cool. Just SOOOO expensive.

GD Ajax

At that price. It’s likely not marketed towards the hobby shooter. $8500 isn’t that big of a dent for police departments, military armorers or a gun company.

Mystick

None of those users, except perhaps some gun companies, reload as their primary source of ammunition. They are all contracted. Specialty rounds? Perhaps – but not to scale.

Wow!

Yeah, few departments will trust the liability of handloads even if done by a machine. Plus, most departments don’t shoot all that much (as sad as it is). After all, shooting is a minor skill compared to driving and communication for most officers.

Mystick

One more thing to break. Yay…

Doom

Not the same thing, this thing is completely automated, in theory you could start it up and walk away. I wouldn’t want to do that with a nearly 9000 dollar machine, but sitting next to it with the tv on? sounds like a way better way to spend an afternoon than reloading by hand lol.

Colonel K

I’ll wait for the Lee knockoff at $299.95 🙂

markrb

Yep! Love my Lee loaders!!!

Wow!

I guess like the ballisticast machine this is for people who want to get into the high volume reloading but don’t want to do some tinkering of their own. That said, motorizing a press isn’t all that difficult once you have a mill with a rotary table and a proper project board for the kill switch and feed rate. It only costs a couple hundred to motorize a dillon press, and judging from the price, it seems they don’t expect to sell many units of these machines.

I know.

Make it a $2500 unit and they couldn’t build enough of these!

They’d have to build a motorize machine that makes motorized reloading machines.